


Promising Light

by dollsome



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: An unexpected reunion. Set after 8.05 - "The Bells."





	Promising Light

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, golly, what a time. Jaime and Brienne have been so beloved by me for this last decade (I can still remember being soooo excited to get to see them in the TV show one day after reading A Storm of Swords and getting totally obsessed w/ them!) and so this past week or so has been Rough, my friends. I just love them so dearly and have loved Nik and Gwen's performances so much, so I had to have one last fanfiction hurrah.
> 
> Also, for some reason, I woke up this morning and my brain was like "JAIME LANNISTER ISN'T DEAD," which quickly spiraled into what my dream reunion scene would be if he wasn't. Ergo this!
> 
> Lastly: infinite love to my buddy Hannah (sameboots on AO3 and agirlnamedkeith on Tumblr) for being my partner in constant Jaime/Brienne freakouts for the past month or so, and for all the insightful conversation about these two! If your soul is hungry for quality Braime, dear readers, go check out her many spectacular J/B fics born in response to this season's plot developments.

_ Now I see love,  
_ _ Looking for you in this other girl’s eyes. _

(Iron & Wine, “Promising Light”)

* * *

 

He opens his eyes, and there she is.

Every bit of him hurts. Each breath is a punishment. There’s no doubt he deserves it.

He isn’t where he ought to be. Not buried under stone; not finally, mercifully dead. He is outside, underneath a big makeshift tent full of recumbent wounded men and the kind souls trying to save them. Beyond the dusty, torn-up bodies, he can see the trees. He recognizes the place as a clearing outside the city. You’d never think hell had just eaten the world. Beyond the stench of dying, there’s a fresh breeze that’s as sweetly alive as anything.

She lets go of his hand, and he realizes she’d been holding it.

“You look awful,” Brienne of Tarth says, her tone determinedly wry.

This is wrong. He was dead. He was dead with Cersei, his arms around her, done at last. Leaving the world just like he entered it.

“Where is she?” Jaime asks. His voice sounds like a dead man’s.

“Gone.”

He looks down at himself. His golden hand isn’t here. His clothes are covered in an opaque layer of grime and dust. He must look just like anyone else in this tent, anonymous in not-quite-death.

“Drink,” she orders.

He looks up to see her holding a cup of water. He lets her tip it into his mouth, obedient as a child. The thought of holding it himself is unfathomable; he can barely move. Still, she’s right as usual: he only discovers his thirst as it’s quenched with each swallow. Once the cup is empty and she takes it away, he feels much more alert. Inevitably among the living.

He wouldn’t wish such a fate on his worst enemy, he decides.

“Why are you here?” he finally asks, a little more life in the words. A deathbed whisper instead of a corpse’s.

“Lady Sansa and I came south as soon as we heard … what happened.”

What happened.

The despair in her expression tells him everything he needs to know. It is as bad as it seemed. Thousands upon thousands have died.

And here he is, alive with the rubble and ashes.

“Why am  _ I _ here?”

“Your brother knew where you were. He made sure to get you out so you could be nursed with the other wounded soldiers on our side.”

“He should have left me.”

Pain darts across her face. If he could feel more, he would regret causing it. Bluntly, she says, “Well, he didn’t.”

“And why haven’t I been burnt to a crisp for treason yet by our noble queen?”

“I think she’s forgotten about you.”

“Seems she’s forgotten everything.”

“Yes. It does.”

They look at each other, joined for a moment by what they’re up against. Two soldiers appraising impossible odds.

“What will be done about that?” he asks.

“Something,” Brienne says. “Soon.”

Another Targaryen, eaten up by madness. There’s no escaping what you’re born. There’s no use in trying to. What you are will always find you.

“Did she hurt you?” Brienne asks, and he thinks she means the Dragon Queen at first. Only then does he remember the stab wounds. He reaches down to his side, the simple movement an agony, and finds that the wounds have been dressed.

“No, no. A skirmish with an annoying pirate.” Something cruel, something that wants her to hurt like he does, makes him add, “Cersei was perfectly lovely.”

“Good,” Brienne says flatly.

Cersei’s face fills his thoughts. Not the woman who’d turned her back on the fate of the world, who’d ordered his death and Tyrion’s. Just his sister, so scared underneath the fury like she always was. Finally weeping instead of fighting. Forgiving him in death the way she never would have if she’d won.

She’s gone, she’s gone and the baby’s gone with her, and he didn’t follow. A faint moan escapes him, the sort of sound that belongs to a dying animal. It’s fitting at this point. What else could he be?

Brienne, in her unrelenting decency, takes pity on him. “I’m sorry the rescue was unsuccessful.”

“It wasn’t a rescue,” Jaime says. Wasn’t it? Hadn’t he planned to get Cersei out, to steal her away, to start a new life together? Tyrion had thought it a good idea.

Jaime hadn’t seen much beyond being with her at the end of the world. He owed her that much. He deserved that little. Nothing else mattered.

“I’m sorry the suicide mission was unsuccessful, then,” Brienne says, sharper now.

“I had to be with her. I had no choice.”

“Yes, you made that very clear.”

The cold dignity of her face makes him think back to the night he last saw her, her face so full of love and desperation and unearned forgiveness then. He’d thought of her as the rubble fell. He’d taken Cersei’s face in his hands and thought of Brienne holding his. Stared into Cersei’s eyes and known at last, too late, that he was free of the feeling that had steered him his whole life. But all he could do then was be what he had always been. Make sure Cersei died with some fragment of peace.

At least she gets to rest now. The luckiest Lannister, all things considered.

Brienne is still watching him. For the first time since he woke, he really studies her appearance. Her hair is mussed. There are dark shadows beneath her eyes. She’s been here, he realizes. She hasn’t left his side.

Of course she hasn’t.

He is overwhelmed again by the sense of how little he deserves her, what a cruel jest of fate it is that her side is his favorite place he’s ever been. She deserves a good man with a soul as unblemished as hers. It had been right of him to leave her, he’d convinced himself that final night at Winterfell. The last kind act of a hateful man.

But now, looking at her, something different occurs to him. He’d shared her bed, kissed her good morning, laughed with her as they grew to know each other better body and soul throughout those weeks. Decided with her that he’d stay.

And then he’d gone.

And he’d died, or so he’d thought, without ever telling her clearly enough.

At least he can right one wrong.

“You know,” he says, “what I feel for you. What I’ve always …” Emotion ripples over her face, like the soft words sting her more than any of his other sins. “You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You can do much better than me.” The declaration hangs in the air, true and horrible, and he can’t help it:  “Say, what ever happened to--?”

“If you say Tormund Giantsbane, I’ll kill you.”

Usually he would laugh at that. Instead, he just goes silent. Once, back in the days when she’d walked him like a dog toward King’s Landing as her prisoner, she would have given anything for such a reward.

He listens to the murmurs of the other hurting men around him, the ones who will die and the ones who will live, voices all blending together. The warm air feels like a longed-for kiss. Somewhere not too far away, birds are singing.

“I don’t belong in this world,” he mumbles. “After what I’ve lost. After what I’ve done. The one good thing I ever did means nothing now. King’s Landing is still in ashes. A lot of pain would have been avoided if I’d let her father do the job years ago. So tell me. Why should I still be here when Cersei is gone?”

“Because she only cared about herself.” Brienne says it softly, carefully, like she’s trying not to nick him with the truth’s sharp edge.

“She only cared about her family,” Jaime corrects, wondering if he means it. “We always had that in common.”

She lets out an angry sound. He thinks she’ll get up and storm out--good for her--but instead she only sits up taller.  “Lie to yourself if you want. Maybe that makes it easier for you.” She takes a steadying breath. “But you and I both know that you’re a good man who wants to fight for what’s right to help the people in this world. We need that now more than ever. The gods have granted you a miracle. So use it.”

She exhales, her face bright with indignant feeling.

He loves her.

He wonders what that means in a world without Cersei.

“Why are you never content to let me waste away?” he demands without bite.

Her mouth twitches in a brief smile. His heart swells with fondness, a feeling so strong he forgets the pain for a moment.

“I don’t know,” she says. “My life would be much easier if I did.”

“Ser Brienne. Too good for her own good.”

“Ser Jaime. Never as bad as he thinks he is.”

She means it lightly. He appreciates that. But there’s no forgetting where they are right now and why.

“I didn’t stop her,” he says. It only really dawns on him as he speaks the words.

“No one could have stopped her,” Brienne protests.

“I saved King’s Landing once.”

“When you had the chance. There wasn’t one this time.”

“I didn’t try. I didn’t fight. I just wanted it to be over.”

She presses her fingers to his cheek, abandoning her careful distance. “Well, it’s not.”

Her hand comes away dirty.

“No, it’s not,” he agrees quietly.

She gets up then, but only to speak to one of the healers tending to the wounded. She comes back with a basin of water and a rag.

“You’re filthy,” she offers by way of explanation as she begins to wash his face.

“As I recall,” he retorts, trying not to lean too hungrily into the relief of her touch, “you’ve enjoyed that fact on occasion in the past.”

She scoffs and keeps to work, her touch firm but tender too. He closes his eyes and listens to the birds and the soft blessing of her breathing.

“There you are,” she says at last, rousing him. With a flicker of teasing beneath her usual steady tone, she adds, “I knew you were still under there somewhere.”

She moves on to washing his neck. He tries to sit up straighter. His whole body screams in protest, but he manages it. “The world has fallen to ashes again. Our savior has become our ruin. Isn’t there somewhere more important, Ser, for a knight of your caliber to be?”

“No,” she says simply.

He reaches toward her, an action worth the pain. She sets the rag down and gives her hand readily. He brings it to his lips and kisses it, kisses her fingers still darkened by the dirt from his face. Her measured countenance gives way. She wipes at a falling tear impatiently with her free hand, not looking away from him. Her shining, sure blue eyes are the best thing he’s ever seen.

“It will be a long wait, I expect, for this broken mess to heal,” he warns her. The words come out less droll than he’d meant them to.

Her mouth curves in a gentle smile.

“I’m patient,” she says.


End file.
